Mitsuda’s musical career has been up and down for the last five years (though most people would say far more “down” than “up”). A recent achievement of his was the Soma Bringer OST, three discs of classic-style Mitsuda for the Nintendo DS RPG. Now, Mitsuda is at it again on the DS, this time it’s for a unique experiment: Level 5’s “Soccer RPG” Inazuma Eleven.
If you’ve heard Mitsuda’s “Hako no Niwa” (the soundtrack for Rakugaki Oukoku 2), you will already have a good sense of what this soundtrack sounds like. No, it’s not a bunch of recordings of wacky children’s instruments (it’s all synth, of course). But the instrumental selections made by Mitsuda for this fun, wacky RPG have some similarities to Hako no Niwa. For example, there are a lot of glockenspiels, marimbas, xylophones, and other “pitched percussion” instruments. Being a Soccer RPG, whistles are used as musical instruments as well. There are some tracks on this album that might be well-suited to the Mario Kart series, in fact, for using whistles, horns, and claps (emulated to be “pitched” on a keyboard) in the most unexpected places.
Mitsuda’s areas of expertise on the Inazuma Eleven OST are the following: 1) incredible rhythm and percussion (some of the hand drum parts are the best Mitsuda’s done since his arrangement on Dark Chronicle); 2) interesting battle themes that are reminiscent of the SNES era (i.e. Chrono Trigger) in synth selection and style. Listen to “Soccer Battle,” one of the first tracks on disc one. If that doesn’t, in any way, remind you of the glory days of Chrono Trigger, I dare say you haven’t been paying attention.
There are a few “filler” tracks on the first disc, unfortunately. Not every song is a winner, but even the ones worth skipping aren’t bad…just bland. Another problem I had with the album is that it is deceptively short. You buy the album thinking “oh boy, two discs! Should be plenty of content!” Not really. Just pull one single track from the set, and the album would’ve fit on one disc, as the total time for both discs is 81 minutes. Your OST proper is found on disc one. Disc two has the game’s two vocal themes, a whole array of jingles, and some bonus arranged tracks (which, sadly, didn’t stand out as very impressive over the originals).
To date, we still haven’t seen that “epic” album from Mitsuda that would follow up to the glory days of Xenogears/saga and Chrono Trigger/Cross. Some have declared Soma Bringer to be the masterpiece we’ve been waiting for, but I’m not convinced. One thing’s for sure, though, regarding Inazuma Eleven: this ain’t it either. But I don’t think anyone expected it to be. And frankly, I’m tired of trying to hold Mitsuda to the impossible standard of recreating his first big work (this is a problem that haunts thousands of contemporary artists, film makers, and musicians). I would recommend enjoying the album for what it is, and I would also recommend anyone who enjoys the audio samples to consider purchasing the soundtrack.
